Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

It’s been about a year and a half since I participated in answering Miss Medicina’s Circle of Healing questionnaire. In fact, it’s been so long that I’d wager many bloggers don’t even know that there was this fantastic questionnaire floating around the internet that engaged so many players from all different flavors of the game! Well, as it turns out while Saunder was working through a series of posts on improving his toon and he recalled how much he learned from everyone’s answers.

Recognizing that many bloggers and members of the community may not have had the chance to participate in the original version, he has decided to reboot the questionnaire with the hope that those new, and old, would again participate and use it not only to grow as a community – but as an educational tool for others! I think that this is fantastic, and was tagged by Vidyala to offer my thoughts!

I received an email yesterday looking for some advice on how spirit gear should be handled when there is both a healer and a DPS that can make use of the item. Since this is an issue that I think many guilds probably have to deal with on a regular basis, I thought it would be interesting to see how everyone handles spirit loot. Below I’m going to provide the question as well as my response to the question. But then I’d love to hear your take on the issue as well.

The Question

(Please note that I’ve taken the liberty of changing some specifics to generalities in both the question and my reply).

Last night we had a spirit item drop that both a healer and a DPS could use. The healer and the DPS rolled… and the healer won. After the raid a number of us were on vent and there was more talk about the DPS rolling on spirit gear.

Our guild leader thinks it’s important to think about what is needed for the best of the raid and that healers need to get the gear first. I, personally, have a serious problem with dps rolling on spirit gear and then also rolling on gear without spirit on it. It just seems like double dipping on two loot tables when the healer only has one loot table to roll on.

I went to EJ to see if there was a clearly defined answer to the question, and wasn’t able to find one. However, what I did find was a note that said just because you CAN roll on spirit gear doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Of course, the same note then also listed the contested item as BiS for this DPS class, so I’m trying to figure out how to deal with this situation when it comes up again in future raids.

What is your guild’s take on this?

My Answer

We open spirit gear up to: Moonkin, Elemental Shaman and Shadow Priests, as well as our healers and everyone is pretty much on equal footing for it. Largely because so much of the gear is shared, and a lot of the spirit gear is also BiS for the DPS classes as well as the healers.

That being said, we do ask everyone to know what is BiS for them gearwise, and take that into account when they are asking for an item. Sometimes when we are trying to decide where to award an item, we will ask the DPS class where it falls in their gear list before awarding it and take that into consideration. If it’s an item that is BiS for them, and they won’t be replacing it with something else down the line, it’s equally open for them. We don’t not award it to a DPS just because a healer wants it as well. The converse is also true, however – I received my BiS weapon from Magmaw over a DPS, even though the weapon does not have spirit on it.

The only people that we really ever favor gearing up over others are our tanks – and only to a small degree. In my opinion gearing your DPS is equally important as gearing your healers because DPS pushing a boss down faster will also make an encounter easier. We really try very hard to gear our raid team equally, so that every member has equal gear to perform their job and so that our raid team grows at the same rate.

The item you referenced is really tricky, mostly because there are very limited options for that gear slot. Because of the lack of options, and the fact that the DPS can make good use from the spirit on the item that did drop (and is his BiS), I probably would have given him equal opportunity to receive it.

As for looking forward – I would probably just ask your DPS to know what spirit options are good for them (they will have some BiS gear that contains spirit), and ask them to refrain from rolling on spirit gear that isn’t BiS for them unless your healers don’t need the item. I think that should be a reasonable compromise on both ends, as it lets your DPS have an equal opportunity for gear upgrades that contain spirit, but also doesn’t put your healers in a bad spot either.

Regardless of my advice – I’m curious how other people handles spirit gear within their raid teams. We have always been open and aware of “BiS” for people that may be “unconventional” – such as leather for warriors and cloth for shaman/druids in prior raid tiers. We have always accepted that BiS is what it is, and trust that our raiders have spent the time to research their gear before asking for loot. I’m curious, though, if we are just really open-minded in this respect. What is your take on this topic? If this email had come to you, how would you have responded?

I don’t think that it is unusual to have periods where you are frustrated with your guild. In fact, I’d probably say that if you don’t experience these times you are probably living in denial of said frustration! I think that frustrations have possibly run higher than usual in this tier of content: it’s a huge step up in difficulty, the hard modes are fairly unforgiving, and there is a lot of content to push through – which can be somewhat overwhelming.

I am likely not alone when I admit there are nights where I want to strangle my raid team. Or when I admit that there are nights when I feel like I am perpetually giving my monitor the finger. But I recognize that often times it’s so easy to focus on everything that is going “wrong” and forget to give equal attention to all of the things that are going “right”. And often times it’s the little things that you forget to appreciate and notice.

Last night I had one of those moments where it was the little things that reminded me why I love my guild.

We’ve had a pretty good raid week the past couple of weeks. We’ve cleared most of the content pretty efficiently, and have started working on Heroic Nef. Last night we cleared just about all of the content we had left – and still had almost two hours of raid time. So we decided to go ahead and head down and poke and Nef a little bit more – with some very specific goals on where we wanted to focus our time and improvements. We took about 5 or 6 pulls, and in that short amount of time we made what I feel was some pretty significant progress on the encounter.

But that isn’t the small thing that really made my night.

I mean, progress is always awesome. But it’s also what I go into every raid expecting. Rather it was what we did in the last 30 minutes of the raid that really made me appreciate some of the little things. We decided after a bit of wiping on Nef that it might be good fun to go and tear up Stormwind a little bit (and idea I got from someone on Twitter). Now, we’ve done other “fun” things to try and shake up the raid and engage people – and these activities are met with differing levels of excitement by the raid. Some people love them, some not so much.

So when we announced that we would be heading to SW for the last 20 minutes or so of our raid, I had expected a few people to grumble or comment on how it was a waste of our time and ask if they could head out early. Only that didn’t happen. Not even close.

What did happen was people seemed to get…excited. We had people go fetch their PvP gear and vent got very chatty. Several people asked if I would be FRAPing the run to put up on the website, and started offering suggestions for the music for the video clip. We chuckled as we all tried to navigate the new and improved Stormwind (I’ve got to say – Garrosh hired the better interior decorator). Even after we went in to meet with Mr. Wrynn – and were greeted by at least 100 Alliance and had our collective asses handed to us, people continued to enjoy the experience.

There was much laughter as we watched an achievement for killing 2500 alliance in a capital city scroll across our screens – and even more laughter by those who hung around Org once we returned to our home town as we watched the alliance attempt to retaliate.

The simple fact that no one complained about our adventure, and that everyone truly seemed to have fun really just made my night. I didn’t have to feel guilty about making a bad call. I didn’t have to worry if someone was unhappy that we didn’t spend those last 20 minutes on another two Nef pulls. And in all honesty – I think the kick back and opportunity to blow off some steam was good for everyone.

Sometimes the little things can really have a lot more value than the big ones.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember to appreciate all of the little things – but it is important to remember them! What little things have impacted you?

The druid community is generally a very chatty bunch of branches. However, lately we’ve noticed that one tree has been unusually quiet. Naturally, this causes concern, as we start to wonder about the silence and worry if everything is alright. Well…that is what most people do, anyhow.

But, you see, I’m not most people. Neither is my good friend Keredria. And the two of us not being most people we decided to go on a journey in search of our lost tree friend, Kae. Because, well, we really miss her! We were determined to find her, looking everywhere we could possibly think!

And in honor of our friend Kae, I have done my best to document Keredria’s and my efforts in, uh, stick figures.

(I pretty much fail at HTML – so if I’ve done this properly you should see a small version of our search, and if you click through see it full size. If I’ve not done it properly, I will fix it ASAP and you should check back!)

In light of everything that’s been circling around the blogosphere lately, I thought that perhaps it was time to get to the bottom of it. And I think that I’ve got a fool-proof method for solving the problems that we’ve been seeing! Honest!

You see, being a child of the 80’s (yes, I had mall hair – MOCK ME IF YOU DARE!) we had a definitive guide for how to behave. Someone to help us understand that you can’t always judge a book by its cover and the teach us to differentiate good behavior from bad. (See! The 80’s had more than just kick ass fashion, Aqua Net and Madonna!).

Who was this guide, this muse, this purveyor of such a wealth of information? I’ll tell you my friends, it is none other than the fabulous John Hughes. (Snigger all you want! The man was a genius!).

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW WHO JOHN HUGHES IS?!?!?!

Well…that explains a lot! If you are scratching your head confused, head to your nearest blockbuster and rent anything of his pre-1990 (preferably with Molly Ringwald)! Be educated by the master of how to treat people!

The Fool Proof Method! The next time you have the urge to be a bit controversial in any medium, be it your blog or twitter – before you act, ask yourself “What would John Hughes Do?”.

And then remember how awful you felt for Molly Ringwald as she stitched up that pink dress only to have to go to prom alone. Of course you should then relish the awesomeness that is Ducky – and learn the lessons that Andrew McCarthy learned the hard way. But hopefully by now you get my drift!

In all honesty, you could do a lot worse than follow some semi-dated, yet still relevant, advice from the 80’s!

We are still trucking along through hard modes, snagging a Maloriak kill last night. The fight in and of itself took us a little bit longer than I feel it should have – largely to spending the first two nights working on it with interrupt woes. Once that was shored up, we started doing much better.

A few things to note on the encounter – while there is a lot going on, I honestly can’t help but feel that the first 2/3 of the fight is all about interrupting the right shit at the right time. (This must be pretty hellish for Aussie guilds with high latency). We found that the best way to have your interupters deal with this is to get a mod that will let you white list/black list spells – ours favored a mod called Gnosis.

Of course, we are also pretty sure that our elemental shaman who ultimately took up the task of interrupting Arcane Storm now has a permanant twitch.

We also learned that it is, in fact, possible to get the kill 12 aberations achievement in heroic mode. Don’t ask!

I’m not 100% sure what our next heroic target will be, from the numbers it looks like many people have tackled Atramedes. We intend to peek at him tonight since he’s all we have left outside of Nef. I don’t know if he’ll end up being our next target – but what I do know is that going by the numbers it’s pretty much a toss up as to what people find “easier” :)Read the rest of this entry »

I read a post this weekend that both saddened me and made me think a bit. You see Tam and I started blogging right about the same time, and we sort of “discovered” each other just as we each opened our respective doors and our thoughts to the world. He was in his Sissy Dress, and I was full of frustration and looking for an outlet to express it. I do not know if it was reciprocated (although I’d like to think it was!), but I have always felt a bit of a bond to Tam and have always been incredibly fond of him. I read his thoughts daily, even after his blog hit my work’s “you shall not view this” filter under the category “Adult Content” (I still think it was the WoW Cocks!) – but sadly didn’t comment as often as I should have as a result.

While I completely support and respect Tam’s decision to stop blogging, I am a little sad that his voice will be leaving our community. He offered this amazing insight into the most complex of things and always did it in such an intriguing way that you couldn’t help but follow through to the end of his thought. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the creativity he posses. Honestly, he probably has more creativity in just one tiny button of that sissy robe he is so fond of than I have in the entirety of my mind. One of the things that Tam was always so good at was addressing any topic with a side dish of humor, regardless of it is was something just for run or seriously deep thoughts. In fact, I bet if I ran a poll of people who found themselves laughing out loud from his rhetoric the poll meter would break. (You know, like in a cartoon, where the thermometer fills to full and then just BURSTS! out of the top).

Dear God, Beru! Do you have a point in all of this?!?!

I do! Honest! I’m just working my way around to it, sheesh! Can I continue now? Yes?

You see, one of the things that reading Tam’s farewell post made me realize this weekend is that he always seemed to have so much fun in whatever it was he was doing. Not only did he have a bit of fun – but he shared that fun with all of us and that got me to thinking about how much I was going to miss his anecdotes. And that made me realize that sometimes I forget about the fun. I sit down to write a post and so rarely do I think “I’m going to just have fun today!”. More often I write about whatever bee is flying around my bonnet – and I don’t really think that there is anything wrong with that, per se – it’s just always so serious.

Now, I already left a goodbye note to Tam and Chas. It was filled with all kinds of terrible Lord of the Rings analogies – to go along with the title of their post. But as I thought more about it, it doesn’t really do my friend Tam justice. Because, you know, a few words are hardly enough to say goodbye to someone to truly show the fondness that I felt for Tam and the joy that he often brought me through his writing. And so I thought that perhaps the best “good luck and have fun!” gift/words that I could offer was to try a put a bit of Tam in my post today, and see if I couldn’t have a bit of fun.

Before I get started, I would also like to encourage everyone who enjoyed Tam and Chas’ work to do a bit of the same this week. Show Tam and Chas how valued they were in the community, and how much we will miss them, by bringing a bit of fun into a post on your blog this week in their honor and to say goodbye and good luck!

And so, without further ado, I’d like to present to you a little bit of fun in honor of Tam!

This weekend, I decided to finally give the goblin starting zone a bit of a try. Now, I know that some really didn’t care for it and after doing the zone, I can certainly see why it wouldn’t tickle everyone’s fancy. But I had an immense amount of fun moving through it. To be fair – I was a little surprised that Blizzard was promoting insurance fraud and robbing a bank in one of the starter quests, but I took it for the laugh it was supposed to be. I will admit that overall I enjoyed the zone quite a bit.

Regardless of if you loved or hated the zone, there was nothing anywhere in Kezen funnier than one of the buffs that you receive – and I happen to think that this can be appreciated by all. What buff is that, you might ask? Let me show you!

If you aren’t cracking up with laughter (the way I was the entirety of the time I had this buff!) then you clearly aren’t familiar with the fine work of one Robert Matthew Van Winkle. Or perhaps you are just too young to truly appreciate how funny it really is! Of course, I supposed that you could also just be too embarrassed to admit how fond you were of this fine artist (for shame!), because let’s be honest the song is damn catchy! Admit it! Just on seeing this buff you now have it stuck in your head! MUAHAHAHAHA!

For those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about, do not fear – I have included some insight for you :) Just click on the picture of the buff above and travel back in time with me, circa 1991, to stop, collaborate and listen! I am not ashamed to admit that as I was driving around town Brade and I were both singing Ice, Ice Baby (although, I will rat him out and disclose that he knew far more of the words than I did!). I will also admit that at one point in my life I did own a pair of those horrid pants – don’t even ask me what I was thinking!

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If you intend to use anything on this website, please have the courtesy to attribute what you share, and offer links back to this site. If you are unsure if you can use the content found here, please do not hesitate to contact me directly. ~Beru